From Words to Action: USAID’s integration of the Sustainable Development Goals

President Barack Obama’s September 2015 speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was the capstone of his Administration’s efforts to shape the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda or Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “Today, we commit ourselves to new Sustainable Development Goals, including our goal of ending extreme poverty in our world,” the President said.

For years prior to the United Nations (U.N.) approval of the SDGs in September, The White House, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and officials from other U.S. foreign assistance agencies touted the importance of the SDGs. President Obama discussed eradicating extreme poverty – one of the central SDGs – during three State of the Union addresses. 2 The U.S. Government (USG), led by the U.S. Department of State and USAID, also made important contributions to the development of the SDGs through its engagement with the U.N. process over the past three years.

But now the United States – and the world – confronts the more difficult task of integrating the ambitious SDGs into the daily programming, policy, and practice of foreign assistance and national development. This policy brief provides an analysis of the Administration’s early thinking on how it will integrate the transformative agenda of the SDGs into its work. We focus primarily on USAID, although our analysis includes other U.S. foreign policy agencies, such as the State Department.

In addition to this analysis, we provide recommendations as to how USAID can expeditiously begin to concretize the SDGs through its overseas development work.